Small but interesting

So 1969 is BC

Unix Tick Tocks to a Billion, Wired: Delving into the intricate study of how computers tell time is not a task suited to those weak in math. In a machine, time is represented by a counter: At the center of a system is a quartz-crystal heart that pulses every second, and each second is added to the count. For a computer to have any comprehension of now, it must determine how many seconds have elapsed since then -- and the earliest then is called the "epoch," or the theoretical time the clock began ticking.

The Unix epoch is midnight on January 1, 1970. It's important to remember that this isn't Unix's "birthday" -- rough versions of the operating system were around in the 1960s. Instead, the date was programmed into the system sometime in the early 70s only because it was convenient to do so, according to Dennis Ritchie, one the engineers who worked on Unix at Bell Labs at its inception.

"At the time we didn't have tapes and we had a couple of file-systems running and we kept changing the origin of time," he said. "So finally we said, 'Let's pick one thing that's not going to overflow for a while.' 1970 seemed to be as good as any. "

There are approximately 32 millions seconds in a year, which means that it takes about 31 years for a billion seconds to pass.

But where's MLK?

Scrutiny Increases for a Group Advocating for Muslims in U.S., The Times: But they still support its civil rights work and endorse the idea of anyone working to make American Islam a more integral part of society. One Arab-American advocate compared CAIR to “the tough cousin who curses at anyone who speaks badly about the family.”

Some activists and academics view the controversy surrounding the group as typical of why Washington fails so often in the Middle East, while extremism mushrooms.

“How far are we going to keep going in this endless circle: ‘You are a terrorist!’ ‘No, you are a terrorist!’? ” said Souleiman Ghali, one of the founders of a moderate San Francisco mosque. “People are paying a price for that.”

What we're bringing to Iraq

For U.S. Troops at War, Liquor Is Spur to Crime , The Times: And in March 2006, in perhaps the most gruesome crime committed by American troops in Iraq, a group of 101st Airborne Division soldiers stationed in Mahmudiya raped a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and killed her and her family after drinking several cans of locally made whiskey supplied by Iraqi Army soldiers, military prosecutors said.

Alcohol, strictly forbidden by the American military in Iraq and Afghanistan, is involved in a growing number of crimes committed by troops deployed to those countries. Alcohol- and drug-related charges were involved in more than a third of all Army criminal prosecutions of soldiers in the two war zones — 240 of the 665 cases resulting in convictions, according to records obtained by The New York Times through a Freedom of Information Act request.

Seventy-three of those 240 cases involve some of the most serious crimes committed, including murder, rape, armed robbery and assault. Sex crimes accounted for 12 of the convictions.

The 240 cases involved a roughly equal number of drug and alcohol offenses, although alcohol-related crimes have increased each year since 2004.

Despite the military’s ban on all alcoholic beverages — and strict Islamic prohibitions against drinking and drug use — liquor is cheap and ever easier to find for soldiers looking to self-medicate the effects of combat stress, depression or the frustrations of extended deployments, said military defense lawyers, commanders and doctors who treat soldiers’ emotional problems.

“It’s clear that we’ve got a lot of significant alcohol problems that are pervasive across the military,” said Dr. Thomas R. Kosten, a psychiatrist at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Houston. He traces their drinking and drug use to the stress of working in a war zone. “The treatment that they take for it is the same treatment that they took after Vietnam,” Dr. Kosten said. “They turn to alcohol and drugs.”

The use of alcohol and drugs in war zones appears to reflect a broader trend toward heavier and more frequent drinking among all military personnel, but especially in the Army and Marine Corps, the two services doing most of the fighting, Pentagon officials and military health experts said.

A Pentagon health study released in January, for instance, found that the rate of binge drinking in the Army shot up by 30 percent from 2002 to 2005, and “may signal an increasing pattern of heavy alcohol use in the Army.”

How's their Chines?

Journey From a Chinese Orphanage to a Jewish Rite of Passage , the Times: Fu Qian, renamed Cecelia Nealon-Shapiro at 3 months, was one of the first Chinese children — most of them girls — taken in by American families after China opened its doors to international adoption in the early 1990s. Now, at 13, she is one of the first to complete the rite of passage into Jewish womanhood known as bat mitzvah.

She will not be the last. Across the country, many Jewish girls like her will be studying their Torah portions, struggling to master the plaintive singsong of Hebrew liturgy and trying to decide whether to wear Ann Taylor or a traditional Chinese outfit to the after-party.

There are plenty of American Jews, of course, who do not “look Jewish.” And grappling with identity is something all adopted children do, not just Chinese Jews.

But seldom is the juxtaposition of homeland and new home, of faith and background, so stark. And nothing brings out the contrasts like a bat mitzvah, as formal a declaration of identity as any 13-year-old can be called upon to make. The contradictions show up in ways both playful — yin-and-yang yarmulkes, kiddush cups disguised as papier-mâché dragons, kosher lo mein and veal ribs at the buffet — and profound.

Yet for Cece, as everyone calls Cecelia, and for many of the girls like her, the odd thing about the whole experience is that it’s not much odder than it is for any 13-year-old.

“I knew that when I came to this age I was going to have to do it, so it was sort of natural,” she said a few days before the ceremony at Congregation Rodeph Sholom, a Reform synagogue on West 83rd Street where she has been a familiar face since her days in the Little Twos program. Besides, she said with a shrug, “Most of my Chinese friends are Jewish.”

As Zoe Kress, an adoptee in Mt. Laurel, N.J., said about her approaching bat mitzvah: “Being Chinese and Jewish is normal for me. Thinking about being Chinese and Jewish is a little strange.”

Olivia Rauss, a girl in Massachusetts who celebrated her bat mitzvah last fall on a day when the Jewish harvest festival of Sukkot coincided with the Chinese autumn moon festival, said she saw no tension between the two facets of her identity either.

“Judaism is a religion, Chinese is my heritage and somewhat my culture, and I’m looking at them in a different way,” she said. “I don’t feel like they conflict with each other at all.”

While no statistics are kept on the number of Chinese children adopted by Jewish families, over all, there were about 1,300 Chinese children adopted into American families from 1991 to 1994, another 17,000 in the second half of the ’90s, and 44,000 since then, according to the State Department.

Bridging two cultures
From my favorite film critic, Jonathan Rosenbaum of the Chicago Reader, some notes on Letters From Iwo Jima:

One reason I wasn't sure what to think of Letters the first time I saw it was that I didn't know how it would be received in Japan. I wondered if it would seem accurate to most viewers there. I've since learned that the response has been very favorable and that it's been near the top of the box-office charts since it opened.

A Japanese film critic and friend, Shigehiko Hasumi, who was around eight years old when the Americans landed on Iwo Jima, admitted to me that even though he likes Letters From Iwo Jima, he prefers Flags of Our Fathers. I suspect he prefers it for the same reason I prefer Letters From Iwo Jima -- because it tells a less familiar story. (I'll concede that Flags of Our Fathers is stylistically more ambitious -- in its exploration of how images are made and turned into emblems -- but that doesn't necessarily make it more successful.) I told Hasumi I worried that Letters From Iwo Jima might define the humanity of the Japanese characters only in terms of American traits (a bias I see in spades in Lost in Translation), but he assured me the film is true to a "certain Japanese reality." He added that he found the portraits of the pro-American Japanese officers in the film a bit "romantic," comparing them to John Ford's depictions of Confederate officers in such films as The Horse Soldiers.

I think General Kuribayashi (Ken Watanabe) also sometimes recalls John Wayne's cavalry officer in Ford's She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, though he's more ambiguous and more of a misfit. Kuribayashi reportedly was sent to Iwo Jima as punishment for being pro-American, not for incompetence (though his competence is questioned throughout the film by others). Hasumi also told me that in the war's final stages many "internationalized" students and intellectuals were called up, including his father and one of his uncles. Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto -- who developed the strategy to bomb Pearl Harbor, and whose death in 1943 in the South Pacific is briefly alluded to in Letters -- was also pro-American and initially opposed to the war.

In the tradition of Christopher Hitchens

Proof That Whites Inherently Hate Us, Kenneth Eng in AsianWeek: White people hate us and will always hate us. Here is a simple list of evidence, going from the most obvious down to the least obvious: ...

Furthermore, we do live in an age where “political correctness” and anti-racism are in vogue. Why then, are there virtually no Asian heroes in the media? This is solid proof that we are enemies in the eyes of the Aryans. If even in an epoch where equality is an important matter they still do not treat us as equals, then what hope is there that they will ever treat us equally?

More importantly, why should we care? We vastly outnumber them. When you have a disobedient child, you do not give him gifts to make him abide to your will. You show him the cane.

Guess which one's white?

Teacher Snips Mouthy Pupil's Tongue: A Milan teacher cut an unruly 7-year-old pupil's tongue with scissors to silence him, police and school officials said on Tuesday.

The child, of North African origin, needed to go to hospital for five stitches to close the wound.

The boy's family has filed suit against the teacher, who has been suspended after last week's incident.

Police are trying to find out whether the injury was inflicted intentionally or was a joke gone wrong, a police source said.

"We are carrying out a full inquiry to find out what really happened," said Anna Maria Dominici, in charge of schools in the Lombardy region.

The teacher, a support tutor on a temporary contract, risks being fired from the elementary school.

"She is a young teacher but the episode is so serious that inexperience has nothing to do with it," Dominici added.

But not the headline writerLet Aliens Vote: Activists, Frankie Edozin, New York Post: They didn't always know nothing back then

Immigrant-rights activists yesterday renewed their push to allow legal noncitizens to vote in the Big Apple.

A bill that would grant permanent residents and other legal immigrants the right to vote in municipal elections has been stalled in the City Council since last year.

"More than 50,000 adult noncitizen taxpayers in those two districts are disenfranchised by citizenship voting laws," said Cheryl Wertz, of New Immigrant Community Empowerment, referring to today's special election for council seats in Brooklyn and Staten Island.

Councilman Charles Barron (D-Brooklyn), the sponsor of the Voting Rights Restoration Act, said that years ago, when immigrants were mostly European, they had voting rights.

"Then when the complexion of immigrants changes, then all of a sudden, the laws change," he said.

Ron Hayduk, a CUNY professor, concurred, saying immigrants voted in national elections from 1776 through 1926.

Yup, racism's dead

Churchill Episode Brings Together Black Community: A simmering feud over a girl had exploded into violence outside school. The principal, hoping to calm the school's white majority, wrote that "every incident revolving around this two-month ordeal has been Black-on-Black violence."

The fight and the fallout over the letter threatened to pit parents such as Smith -- who are well educated, affluent and scattered throughout the suburb, and who have mostly warm feelings about the school -- against the historically working-class black community of Scotland, a 10-acre spread of pastel townhouses off Seven Locks Road in eastern Potomac, where many say they have never felt welcome at Churchill High.

The principal's letter did not mention that nearly everyone arrested in the fight lived in Scotland. It didn't have to. Around the community, talk inevitably turned to the black enclave, whose denizens feel forever stigmatized for their race and limited means.

But in the weeks since, parents say, the divisive episode has had the unexpected effect of bringing Potomac's black community closer together. The episode prompted the first school-wide meeting of black parents at Churchill in recent memory. The Jan. 9 meeting, and the dialogue that began there, brought out themes common to the entire black community and tapped into a shared experience of what it means to be black at Churchill.

"The number one challenge you're facing with a child of color centers around expectations," Smith said. "It's just lower expectations."

Smith and his wife own a consulting company that counsels corporations on diversity. He said he has learned to play much the same role at Churchill, monitoring teachers to see that his children's abilities are recognized and their minds suitably challenged.

"It means you have to respond to fairly innocent comments such as, 'He's such a nice boy,' " Smith said. His response: " 'Of course, he's a good kid. But can he read?' It's sad, but I have to mention that my wife and I are both Ivy League-educated."

Smith said he has few complaints about Churchill High. And yet he said he understands why Scotland parents have so many. The difference between their experience and his, he said, is largely one of degree.

He and other blacks in the Potomac community outside Scotland said they were immediately offended by the principal's characterization of the January fight. And they understood the bitter reaction of the Scotland parents, in contrast to the reaction of many white parents at the school. The mostly white PTSA closed rank around the principal.

Loose cannon Australia, part 78

Anti-war Aussies attacked - Rudd: On Sunday, [Australian Prime Minister John] Howard told Channel 9: "If I were running al-Qaida in Iraq, I would put a circle around March 2008 and be praying as many times as possible for a victory, not only for Obama but also for the Democrats."

Senator Obama replied by challenging Mr Howard to boost Australian troop numbers by 20,000 in Iraq from the 1400 there now if he supported the war so strongly.

"Otherwise, it's just a bunch of empty rhetoric," he said. "I think it's flattering that one of George Bush's allies on the other side of the world started attacking me the day after I announced." ... The latest attacks came as John Howard faced a backlash both at home and abroad over his extraordinary attack on US presidential contender Barack Obama and his Democratic Party.

The PM's suggestion that terrorists would rejoice if Senator Obama or his party won the presidency in 2008 were branded as "bizarre", and condemned by both sides of US politics.

The charismatic Senator Obama dismissed Mr Howard's criticism of his plan to withdraw American forces from Iraq as "empty rhetoric".

Fellow Democrats were also unimpressed by the remarks, which were broadcast across the US.

Even prominent Republicans urged the PM to butt out.

Texas Republican senator John Cornyn said: "I would prefer that Mr Howard stay out of our domestic politics and we will stay out of his domestic politics."

In Canberra, Mr Howard faced an Opposition censure motion alleging he had recklessly endangered the US alliance and possibly relations with the next president.

Mr Rudd said: "To accuse the party of Roosevelt, to accuse the party of Truman, of Kennedy and Johnson, of being the terrorists' party of choice . . .

"I cannot understand how any responsible leader of this country can say to the nation that it is his serious view that the Democratic Party of the US is the terrorists' party of choice."

But Mr Howard stood by his remarks and denied he had threatened US-Australian relations.

"(America) doesn't want a country and a friend that will leave her in the lurch," he said.

"I would say the greatest current threat to the quality of the alliance would be a sense in the United States that Australia had deserted her in her hour of need."

Obama's specific response was even more pointed, as reported by The Australian: In a pointed reference to Australia's modest contingent of 1400 troops in Iraq and around the Persian Gulf, the Democratic star said: "So, if he's ginned up to fight the good fight in Iraq, I would suggest he calls up another 20,000 Australians and sends them up to Iraq."

Juan Crow

Va. House Approves Bill On Illegal Immigration, Washignton Post: The Virginia House of Delegates approved a far-reaching proposal Tuesday to strip charities and other organizations of state and local funding if any of the money is used to provide services to immigrants in the country illegally.

The proposal, one of nearly 50 immigration-related bills under consideration by the General Assembly, could force such groups as the Salvation Army and the Virginia Association of Free Clinics to verify immigration status before offering assistance to those in need or risk losing funding.

"This is to make sure the monies that are going to charities and organizations go to the people they are intended to go to, which is legal immigrants," said Del. Jackson H. Miller (R-Manassas), the sponsor of the bill. "The ultimate goal is to make the commonwealth of Virginia an unwelcome place if you are in this country illegally."

Nuevo York

New Favor for a Name That Straddles Cultures, Sam Roberts in the Times: For the first time in a generation, the most popular name for newborn Hispanic boys in New York City is an ethnic one: Angel.

There are more Angels in America than ever before: the name ranked 32nd nationwide, a record high, among all baby boys in 2005 and in Arizona it is now the most popular name among all male newborns.

But in New York, the nation’s proverbial melting pot, a traditional Spanish name has not been No. 1, even among Hispanic boys, since the mid-1980s, when José ranked first. (José is still ahead of Angel nationally, in 30th place.) Instead, Hispanic parents generally choose decidedly Anglo names, like Kevin and Justin. ...

The baby name list is not broken down by the parents’ ancestry, and cultural anthropologists were generally at a loss to suggest a single reason for the popularity of Angel, which can take either the standard English pronunciation or the Spanish one of AHN-hel.

“There were 9,362 boys named Angel in 2004 and 10,788 in 2005” across the country, said Cleveland Kent Evans, the president of the American Name Society. “That’s a 15 percent increase in one year, a fairly rapid upward rise, and shows that Angel was increasing in use in the Hispanic community nationally before it showed up on top in New York City.

“It is today’s perfect compromise name,” he said, “for those who want to emphasize their Hispanic heritage and yet assimilate into the larger society at the same time.”

Héctor R. Cordero-Guzmán, the chairman of the Department of Black and Hispanic Studies at Baruch College, said Angel was suggestive of “qualities mothers would like their children to have or is somewhat eponymous. The levels of religiosity in the Latino community, I think, also add to the popularity of the name.

“I do not think the increase in the name reflects increasing (or decreasing) ‘nationalism’, nor is there a particularly popular figure in music or film or TV that would explain the sudden jump in the name,” he said. “When Latino parents look for names they look for names that can be pronounced well in both Spanish and English.”

Guillermina Jasso, a sociology professor at New York University, said Angel was “evocative of the old converso practice of taking on very Christian surnames as a way of survival in a suspicious environment. If the surge in Angel is indeed linked to New Yorkers born in Mexico, then it has an added meaning, a kind of hope and protection for persons, many of whom are illegal immigrants.

“Like wearing an amulet, having an ‘Angel’ under the roof may provide a measure of tranquillity,” Professor Jasso said.

Is that Borat in the background?

American Road Trip Through Arab Eyes , the Times: “On the Road in America” looks, on first viewing, like the sort of television show that Al Jazeera and MTV might produce if they could be coaxed together in front of an editing terminal. A 12-part reality series, currently being broadcast throughout the Middle East, “On the Road” features a caravan of young, good-looking Arabs crisscrossing America on a mission to educate themselves and the people they encounter along the way.

Call Dustin

Brain Man:
One Man's Gift May Be The Key To Better Understanding The Brain, CBS: Morley Safer met another savant, Daniel Tammet, who is called "Brain Man" in Britain. But unlike most savants, he has no obvious mental disability, and most important to scientists, he can describe his own thought process. He may very well be a scientific Rosetta stone, a key to understanding the brain. ...

It is estimated there are only 50 true savants living in the world today, and yet none are like Daniel. He is articulate, self-sufficient, blessed with all of the spectacular ability of a savant, but with very little of the disability. Take his math skill, for example.

Asked to multiply 31 by 31 by 31 by 31, Tammet quickly – and accurately – responded with "923,521."

And it’s not just calculating. His gift of memory is stunning. Briefly show him a long numerical sequence and he’ll recite it right back to you. And he can do it backwards, to boot.

That feat is just a warm-up for Daniel Tammet. He first made headlines at Oxford, when he publicly recited the endless sequence of numbers embodied by the Greek letter "Pi." Pi, the numbers we use to calculate the dimensions of a circle, are usually rounded off to 3.14. but its numbers actually go on to infinity.

Daniel studied the sequence – a thousand numbers to a page.

"And I would sit and I would gorge on them. And I would just absorb hundreds and hundreds at a time," he tells Safer.

It took him several weeks to prepare and then Daniel headed to Oxford, where with number crunchers checking every digit, he opened the floodgates of his extraordinary memory.

Tammet says he was able to recite, in a proper order, 22,514 numbers. It took him over five hours and he did it without a single mistake. ...

"I see numbers in my head as colors and shapes and textures. So when I see a long sequence, the sequence forms landscapes in my mind," Tammet explains. "Every number up to 10,000, I can visualize in this way, has it's own color, has it's own shape, has it's own texture."

For example, when Daniel says he sees Pi, he does those instant computations, he is not calculating, but says the answer simply appears to him as a landscape of colorful shapes.

"The shapes aren't static. They're full of color. They're full of texture. In a sense, they're full of life," he says.

Asked if they’re beautiful, Tammet says, "Not all of them. Some of them are ugly. 289 is an ugly number. I don't like it very much. Whereas 333, for example, is beautiful to me. It's round. It's…."

"Chubby," Safer remarks.

'It's—yes. It's chubby,' Tammet agrees.

Shocked

Immigrants Mistreated, Report Says, Spencer S. Hsu, Washington Post: U.S. authorities mistreated suspected illegal immigrants at five prisons and jails nationwide, violating federal standards meant to ensure safe and humane custody, according to a government report released yesterday.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials and contractors denied timely medical treatment to some of the immigrants, failed to disclose and justify disciplinary actions against them, and improperly limited access to relatives, lawyers and immigration authorities, according to the Department of Homeland Security inspector general.

Detention officers failed to establish a system to report abuse and violated health and safety rules by neglecting to monitor prisoners on hunger strikes or suicide watches and by serving undercooked food, the report said.

The report comes amid a sharp increase in illegal immigrants in U.S. detention as Congress and the Bush administration debate an overhaul of immigration laws and promise tougher enforcement of existing laws. Civil liberties and immigrant advocacy groups are stepping up scrutiny of conditions. Jorge Bustamante, the U.N. special rapporteur on human rights of immigrants, has asked to visit U.S. detention centers next month.

Critics of the agency called the report disappointing, contending that it watered down recommendations and ignored the most serious allegations of abuse collected since June 2004, which they said included physical beatings, medical neglect, food shortages and mixing of illegal immigrants in administrative custody with criminals.

"It took two years for them to come out with this? It's incredibly disappointing," said Judy Rabinovitz, a lawyer with the ACLU immigrants rights project.

Eric Lerner, a spokesman for the New Jersey Civil Rights Defense Committee, called the report a "whitewash" that was delayed to suppress controversy.

Practice makes perfect

Equal Cheers for Boys and Girls Draw Some Boos , the Times: Thirty girls signed up for the cheerleading squad this winter at Whitney Point High School in upstate New York. But upon learning they would be waving their pompoms for the girls’ basketball team as well as the boys’, more than half of the aspiring cheerleaders dropped out.

The eight remaining cheerleaders now awkwardly adjust their routines for whichever team is playing here on the home court — “Hands Up You Guys” becomes “Hands Up You Girls”— to comply with a new ruling from federal education officials interpreting Title IX, the law intended to guarantee gender equality in student sports.

“It feels funny when we do it,” said Amanda Cummings, 15, the cheerleading co-captain, who forgot the name of a female basketball player mid-cheer last month.

Whitney Point is one of 14 high schools in the Binghamton area that began sending cheerleaders to girls’ games in late November, after the mother of a female basketball player in Johnson City, N.Y., filed a discrimination complaint with the United States Department of Education. She said the lack of official sideline support made the girls seem like second-string, and violated Title IX’s promise of equal playing fields for both sexes.

Self-interest

Weaning the military from the GOP, Op-Ed in the L.A. Times: Buried in the news last week was one of the most potentially significant stories of recent years. The Military Times released its annual poll of active-duty service members, and the results showed something virtually unprecedented: a one-year decline of 10 percentage points in the number of military personnel identifying themselves as Republicans. In the 2004 poll, the percentage of military respondents who characterized themselves as Republicans stood at 60%. By the end of 2005, that had dropped to 56%. And by the end of 2006, the percentage of military Republicans plummeted to 46%.

The drop in Republican Party identification among active-duty personnel is a sharp reversal of a 30-year trend toward the "Republicanization" of the U.S. military, and it could mark a sea change in the nature of the military — and the nature of public debates about national security issues.

Look how hip we are!

This Is Your Brain on Drugs, Dad, Times Op-Ed: Equally surprising, graying baby boomers have become America’s fastest-growing crime scourge. The F.B.I. reports that last year the number of Americans over the age of 40 arrested for violent and property felonies rose to 420,000, up from 170,000 in 1980. Arrests for drug offenses among those over 40 rose to 360,000 last year, up from 22,000 in 1980. The Bureau of Justice Statistics found that 440,000 Americans ages 40 and older were incarcerated in 2005, triple the number in 1990. ...

It’s time to end the obsession with hyping teenage drug use. The meaningless surveys that policy makers now rely on should be replaced with a comprehensive “drug abuse index” that pulls together largely ignored data on drug-related deaths, hospital emergencies, crime, diseases and similar practical measures.

A good model is the California Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs’ fledgling drug abuse index, which I helped compile and which aims to pinpoint which populations and areas are most harmed by drugs, both legal and illicit.

Few experts would have suspected that the biggest contributors to California’s drug abuse, death and injury toll are educated, middle-aged women living in the Central Valley and rural areas, while the fastest-declining, lowest-risk populations are urban black and Latino teenagers. Yet the index found exactly that. These are the sorts of trends we need to understand if we are to design effective policies.

Next up: Colonialism bill

UK settles WWII debts to allies, BBC: Britain will settle its World War II debts to the US and Canada when it pays two final instalments before the close of 2006, the Treasury has said.
The payments of $83.25m (£42.5m) to the US and US$22.7m (£11.6m) to Canada are the last of 50 instalments since 1950.

The amount paid back is nearly double that loaned in 1945 and 1946. "This week we finally honour in full our commitments to the US and Canada for the support they gave us 60 years ago," said Treasury Minister Ed Balls.